SBDC

Business Management

Human Resources

Leadership

Sales & Marketing

Customer Service

Education

SBDC

Smart Start: Starting a New Business
Do you have a business idea or looking to purchase a business? This workshop will guide you through what you need to know to launch your business and be successful. Hear from a local entrepreneur about how they started their business and lessons learned along the way. Learn how to create a business plan, conduct market research and estimate costs, prepare for a bank loan, legally organize the business and other license/permit requirements, record keeping and taxes, marketing ideas, and what financing options are available. Receive a business plan template, step-by-step guide to opening your business, and other resources available to help you succeed! Class sponsored by America's SBDC Iowa.

Business Management

Business Bookkeeping Certificate
This Certificate is designed for those who want to become a bookkeeper or for small business owners who would like to understand bookkeeping better. Increase your skills in payroll, Quickbooks, Excel, and tax knowledge to enable you to perform bookkeeping accurately and efficiently. Classes include: Word Basics, Accounting Basics, Payroll Accounting, Excel Basics, Excel Intermediate, QuickBooks Online, Understand Your Business Taxes.

Accounting Basic Concepts
Designed for the non-accountant bookkeeper, office manager or owner of a business. Learn basic accounting terms including revenues, expenses, assets, and liabilities. Learn to build and read the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows. Become familiar with accounting debits and credits as you learn how to record transactions in this hands-on course. This course is approved for the Business Bookkeeping Certificate.

Payroll Accounting
It's a fact of business—if a company has employees, it has to account for payroll, fringe benefits, and payroll taxes. This comprehensive course will guide you through processing a new employee, calculating payroll and payroll taxes, payroll tax reporting, and periodic and year end payroll reporting to the government. This course is approved for the Business Bookkeeping Certificate.

QuickBooks Software Comprehensive - Desktop or Online®
We make it easy to get comfortable with QuickBooks.  This course will address setting up your chart accounts, customer and vendor files, recurring transactions, and products/services you sell.  Learn how to manage money coming in including sales, invoicing, and deposits, and money going out by paying bills, booking credit card expenditures, and tracking expenses.  You'll learn how to reconcile accounts, track loans and loan payments, book fiexed assets, and use reports to understand your business, track sales trends and profitability, and prepare for tax time.  You'll leave knowing that you're doing a good job and can handle whatever QuickBooks sends your way. This course is approved for the Business Bookkeeping Certificate.

Desktop version:

Online Version:

Understand Your Business Taxes
Income tax, sales tax, payroll tax, and the list goes on for taxes your business pays. Discussion will center on the various business taxes, forms and ways to file and pay the taxes, and things you can do in your record keeping system to better understand and lessen your tax burden. Participants will receive all materials and are encouraged to bring specific questions. This course is approved for the Business Bookkeeping Certificate.

ServSafe Food Handler
This class is a hybrid with both in-person and virtual training. The class will go through curriculum and be followed by the online exam to be certified with the National Restaurant Association ServSafe Food Handler certificate.

Human Resources

New SHRM Certification Prep Information Session
Free information session to learn about the SHRM Certification Test Prep Course.

SHRM Certification Prep
Commit to Your Career. HR professionals like you are facing new and larger challenges each day due in part to a changing workforce, shifting legislation and regulations and so much more. Ensure you're prepared for these changes, and anything else thrown your way with SHRM's global HR credentials, SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP. Unlike memorization-based certification credentials, SHRM certification measures an HR professional's most critical skill: the ability to apply HR principles to real-life situations. No other exam compares. By becoming SHRM certified, you prove your knowledge, competency and value to colleagues and to employers looking for a competitive edge in today's global economy. Wherever your career takes you, your SHRM certification will define you as an HR expert and leader. Network and collaborate with peers to share real-life examples and bring HR knowledge and competencies to life. The tuition includes the cost of instruction and the SHRM learning system (online and printed material), a $1075 value. This course is provided through a partnership with North Iowa Area Community College (NIACC).

SHRM Essentials of HR
Sharpen Your HR Skills to Face Today's Hr Issues SHRM, the leading global HR professional organization, has developed the SHRM Essentials of Human Resources course, which teaches the HR knowledge, skills and competencies required for overall business success. Whether you are new to HR, or it's one of the many roles you fulfill at your company. In less than 20 hours of training time, you can cover the issues you need to reduce potentially costly lawsuits. The straightforward format ensures that HR concepts can be mastered and applied to real-life situations. This course is in partnership with North Iowa Area Community College (NIACC).

New How to Hire Quality Employees Quickly
A gRecruiting and retaining employees in today's tight labor market is uniquely challenging.  Organizations are being challenged to vastly improve the efficiency and quality of their hiring processes to attract the right employees. If you're looking for concrete examples of effective recruiting tools, including advertisements, where to post your jobs, and how to overcome recruitment challenges in a tight labor market, this workshop is for you. Workshop participants will receive a workbook with templates and tools you can implement right away: recruitment strategy and planning tool, job description template, job advertisement template, orientation and on-boarding checklist.  Participants will also receive pre-workshop consultation and assignments and a post-workshop email with additional recruitment resources.

Human Resource Retention Strategies
Retention now is priority 1. With tremendous recruitment challenges, we have to increase our retention efforts in ways that matter. Learn from the latest research, best practices, and models to shape your retention strategies. Identify ways to maximize your efforts even when resources are limited. Make a stronger pitch to senior leaders about efforts, initiatives, and impact.

Human Resource Employee Mental Health, Well-Being and Burnout Recovery
HR Employee Mental Health, Well-Being and Burnout Recovery The toll of stress and burnout is very real. Join us for information and discussion around HR's impact for creating psychological safety and a mentally healthy workplace. Practice new tools to coach others to persist and recover from burnout. Renew your own strength and energy to continue to watch out and care for others.

Leadership

New Strategic Doing
This class enables people to form action-oriented collaborations quickly, move them toward measurable outcomes, and make adjustments along the way. It yields replicable, scalable, and sustainable collaborations based on simple rules. In the workshop we will create strategic doing plans for your team identifying goals, guideposts, resources and action items. Come ready to take action with your team in creating a compelling future for your organization.

Supervision Certificate
Leader, manager, supervisor, team leader – no matter what your official title, you're expected to get the job done through others. This course provides new and experienced supervisors with the tools and skills for building personal confidence in their leadership role. You will see the relevance of the training, rapidly acquire the skills, and quickly put them to use on the job. Attend all twelve modules and earn a certificate in Supervision. Our program is designed for anyone who manages people in manufacturing, retail, or service industries.

Supervision Survival Skills
This training program is designed for new managers and non-managers interested in or identified for promotion. Knowledge gained in this program will enable you to avoid some of the hard lessons that come from on-the-job learning. Applicable in manufacturing, service, and retail organizations, this seminar presents the fundamental leadership and communication skills and techniques required to manage employees effectively. Content of this training covers the first two modules of the Supervision Certificate.

Handling Conflict
One of the most difficult and most avoided topics in every company and relationship is that of conflict. We all learn from our past in how we handle conflict with others. Some of us have great examples and others, not so much. Everyone experiences some degree of workplace conflict; therefore, we all deserve training on how to handle it most effectively, focusing on great results and best teaming relationships. You will focus on conflict dos and don'ts. Pay close attention to a conflict roadmap that will allow a productive strategy for encouraging and following through with healthy conflict. We will take a closer look at each individual's natural conflict style to increase awareness and become better able to effectively navigate more effective conflict situations. This course is approved for the Effective Management Certificate.

Introduction to Project Management
When faced with change, you have one of three choices…lead, follow or get out of the way. Choose to lead! This course will help managers deal with change in the workplace – both personally and as a leader of their team. Topics include understanding both positive and negative effects of change, learning personal response to change, helping to lead employees through change, seeing change as an opportunity, and communication during change. This course is approved for the Effective Management Certificate.

Sales & Marketing

New Facebook Advertising for Business
Still think Facebook is a fad? Advertisers of all shapes and sizes are finding ways to leverage the social media giant's 1.2 billion users. You know you don't need to reach everyone on Facebook, but engaging even a teeny-tiny fraction of users who live in your corner of the world could do a lot for your business. Learn how to use Facebook's advertising tools to reach, engage and motivate your customers. Also learn tips on what to say, how to say it, and when to say it.

Creating WordPress Websites
Learn how to create attractive, sophisticated blogs and websites—without any coding! WordPress is the world's most popular website publisher, powering more than 25% of all sites on the Internet. Find out how to use WordPress to create pages and posts, add images and videos, change a site's look and feel, and include user-friendly features.

HTML and CSS Series
Introduction to CSS3 and HTML5 - Learn how to create state-of-the-art Web sites using modern CSS3 and HTML5 techniques. Take your existing HTML skills to the next level and start building sites like the pros. If you want to survive and excel in the fast-paced world of Web publishing, you're going to need to keep up with ever-evolving standards. The new standard for Web developers is to use CSS3 and HTML5.

Digital Marketing Suite
Marketing Your Business on the Internet - Find out how to market your business on the Internet, even if you have little or no money to spend! In this practical, hands-on course, you'll discover proven methods that will help you establish an Internet presence and build an online brand identity. You'll learn how search engine optimization (SEO) works and how to track your site's performance using Web analytics. You'll understand how to use online advertising, email marketing, and social media (including blogs) to drive business to your Web site. Finally, you'll learn how to keep your visitors coming back again and again!

Using Social Media in Business
One of the biggest challenges for business owners is finding new customers. Over the past decade, some business owners have leveraged social media to do just that. Whether you're a social media novice or a seasoned veteran, this course will give you a solid foundation in social media marketing and using it to grow your business. In today's globally connected environment, social media is a game changer for businesses.

Achieving Top Search Engine Positions
The vast majority of Web traffic comes from search engines. That means the most important thing you can do to increase your website's traffic is to improve its search engine ranking. To do that, you have to understand both the art and science of search engine optimization (SEO). In this course, you'll gain the knowledge you need to boost your website's visibility. By the end of the course, you'll have mastered proven, step-by-step SEO strategies that you can implement right away.

Customer Service

Customer Service that Shines
We are a service driven industry, however, many elements of customer service are missing in today's businesses. Explore the best practices in today's market to build relationships and keep your customers engaged in your business. This workshop teaches the importance of internal and external customers and how perception becomes reality.

Education

Early Childhood Certificate Level II 96 hours
In this certificate students learn to develop curricula to support the development of each child, implementing evidence-based practices while being mindful of the impact of each child's family life, culture, language, and abilities. Students also learn to create appropriate learning opportunities, interactions, and environments for children to experience dramatic play, art, music, and fine and gross motor play; ultimately, students will be able to use assessment to analyze and guide children's behaviors.

Early Childhood Curriculum I
This course focuses on the development, implementation and assessment of appropriate environments and cirricula for young children ages birth, through eight. Students prepare to utilize evidence based practices in a context of children's family, culture, language, and abilities. An emphasis will be placed on understanding children's developmental stages and developing appropriate learning opportunities interactions, and environments to support each child in the following areas: dramatic play, art, music, and fine and gross motor play. This course is approved for the Early Childhood Certificate Level II

Early Childhood Guidance
This course focuses on developmentally appropriate, evidence-based approaches and positive guidance strategies for supporting the development of each child. The course emphasizes supportive interactions and developmentally appropriate environments while using assessment to analyze and guide behaviors. Students will learn the impact of family and each child's culture, language, and ability on child guidance. This course is approved for the Early Childhood Certificate Level II